sw00043usabys-15.jun.sonnets.12of25

12 of 25                                             

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (168-182)

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June: Year-day 168

Today I found a core of reference
waiting on a shelf in Grolier's Book Shop.
It is an ocean of charmed recompence
that supports my being yet makes me stop
to see again what I've been seeing:  Life's
of a piece that changes and changes, growing
from no beginnings we can grasp, its strifes
and harmonies filled with/ wonders of knowing.

And squaws carry papooses so they see,
and chicks carry babies so they're kept blind.
The old die young; and the young, old.  To find
yourself, you must forget to look, just be;
be yourself, you must look ahead, behind.
This is America: A Prophecy.

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June: Year-day 169

This is a song praising maintenance men,
who may holler, chew, spit, yet keep things clean;
and this is a song for construction men,
who build & rebuild and implant the scene
with structures we want and architects plan,
and this is a song for the architects;
and this is a song for the works of Man,
praying for beauties he often rejects.

The shunned barn, collapsed with its hay, sinks, sinks
into its own decay; the orange moon,
three-quarters bright, nests at a maple's edge;

and animals become the dreams each drinks
and the thoughts each accepts, midnight and noon;
and a man walks out, and hangs from a ledge.

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June: Year-day 170

Long ride on a slow train.  There just ain't no
way I'm gonna git myself to where I'm
goin' on time.  Just have to forget time,
forget he's even around. Watch for snow
come hordin' in at the windows.  Let June go
like a fadin' dream as the colors climb
through the green leaves.  Not fret about time, crime,
jouncin' from Boston to lost--Chi-ca-gooo.

Com'on train you arumblin' on the track.
Com'on train you, need some oil in my back.
Com'on train you on your hazy tired rails,
we gotta git, gotta, out of your jails.
Com'on train you, old turtle in attack,
mean it when you hare, when your whistle wails.

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June: Year-day 171

The trip is over; the trip has just begun.
Turn and turn and turn; and stop, sit, and turn.
My body wins the coffin, fills the urn;
my body dances naked in the sun.

Wheeling/ by in a chair, or on the run,
a hat to shade my eyes, lessen the burn,
considering what's given, what I earn,
I sense how a knife to the gut/ must stun.

The windows roll & shimmer/ in the leaves,
and faces mix & melt & fall apart;
my arms change to cotton beneath my sleeves.

If this is where we end and where we start--
and I don't know who it is/ what deceives,
somewhy a bird's made its nest with my heart.

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June: Year-day 172

Death, my friend, is old news I'd like to say
I do not care to read; yet as its near
I read it anyhow, letting my fear
raise goosebumps on my soul/ trying to pray.

Am I foolish for not throwing away
such news, for not giving a deeper ear
to life, to what's to come, or calls out here
beside me, though its wearing a toupee?

Don't answer me.  It's enough the thread holding
these words together is ready to bust
at the least hint of my attempt to answer.

All the mornings/ those papers I'll be folding,
as all the afternoons/ turned to ash and dust,
as all the steps/ created by/ the dancer.

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June: Year-day 173

And around me, like water, rushing sun;
and around me, like water, swirls of clover;
and when I feel, on one side, I am done,
I notice the cool below, and ease over;
and try to let the insects go their way,
the haze of the heat shimmer and expand
without my feeling hotter where I play
my unclothed flesh between the sky and land.

A sampan on the Yellow River rocks,
a blimp exalts two mountaintops in Spain,
a mongoose knocks a cobra off its blocks,
the fuzzed seeds of dandelions seem rain;
I dream I've been here once and will again
to bandy with the sunlight's pastel spots.

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June: Year-day 174

Step out.  The wind will not/ slice off your nose,
the moon not host itself upon your tongue;
nor will you snatch the fragrance of a rose
or learn how Martians on your tastebuds sung.

This ageing night, darkening in a corner,
whatever its new faults and attributes,
more an enchanted well-wisher than scorner,
won't chop you up and bury you in roots.

So take your thoughts and sail them to the stars
and raise a cup to gentleness.  For you
are moving through a night of special grace,
one that, though each circumstance of which/ bars
your being from certain pleasures, is true
and good, and soothes your back, and clears your face.

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June: Year-day 175

Well, my friend, let's go gather conversations
from the winds.  It's a good day for it.  Not 
a place up the sky is harsh with light.Nations
wrangle, but not a place down the sky's/ sot
with deep gray clouds.  Just dark enough this morning
for the mourning dove; just bright enough this
afternoon for the goldfinch.  The kid horning
in the distance won't make me want to hiss.

"I tell you, Pat, too many of our young
lack respect, especially/ for themselves;
will not care, work, grow up . . . be women / men.
Why?  Coddling parents? laws?  Have we begun
planting barbarians?  Free humans delve,
create, live sensibly!"  And we, my friend?

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June: Year-day 176

The Joplin and Springfield rainbows trance eyes--
lemon, turquoise, orange, gunmetal, rose--
and I don't understand why their repose
graces so southwest Missouri, and pries
those portions of my heart and mind/ ruled
by the gods of self-indulgence, or why
so many of the rich watch the poor die
and laugh, or one's fundamentalist fooled.

Beyond culture the world's alive and well,
but who is there, or once there can remain?
The rainbows of the spirit start in hell;
the rainbows of the body end in pain.
I do not know which ones of us can tell
where light bows/ in a world so/ streaked with rain.

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June: Year-day 177

The body is a fragile work of wonder
rising on the arches of its two feet
with its lungs pulling in air, sour to sweet,
the voice of its courage the voice of thunder.

And the arteries, veins, and spritely nerves
aligning their ways through the flesh the bones
support, and the wild inaudible tones
of the molecules, and the muscles' curves.

Oh, in a moment the heart could spurn pumping,
an insolent gale slash throats with a board,
a bittern intrigue with its hidden thumping,
a candidate bore with his whitewash stumping,
a mind go crazy in a locust hoard,
a body flash in the beauty it's stored.

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June: Year-day 178

To live is to die; to die is to live.
Apple blossoms hold apple blossoms more.
Our joy is measured by the joy we give;
when our virtues virtue, we don't keep score.

Murders occur in our brothers' backyards.
The phoenix rises as its ashes choose.
A person's touched on by the things he guards.
And no one wins until he's learned to lose.

In the alley the trash/ sneaks from its cans,
and moments of sadness savored and snuffed.
Weeds in a corner clutch air with their hands.
Caught by an anger, a lost window slams.
He was stripped and stomped by shadows of toughs.
When we love, we bless, but neverenough.

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June: Year-day 179

Sometimes it isn't worth a Teton Dam,
my attemptatholding the flow of fuel
and controlling it for the person who'll
be me if I soundly/ change who I am.

Graces laked to be continently used
by a spirit their free flow might devour,
and laked to strengthen such apportioned power,
tunnel this spirit's weak anchorage fused.

Some naturals won't unnaturally 
be tampered with, especially by ill,
unstable souls as this one.  Just can't win.

Seeking myself, I use you; you use me,
seeking yourself.  The smeared blade of the will.
It's as rare as heaven/ to defeat sin.

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June: Year-day 180

As the sun coasts toward the tunnel of green,
the blue sky hazes its coming farewell,
our U. S. flag still/ on a pole to tell
another sharp day in our land we've seen.
Then the flag's bounced down in settings serene,
and the mother folds it.  Even the smell
of the zyphers please; and yet Rome once fell
for lack of a durable/ king/ or queen.

Nowhere, nowhere, can we humans erect
a realm so perfected it cannot pass;
someone or something . . . find means to detect
the weaknesses in/ the roots of its grass,
even if we in/ our wisdoms suspect/
what seems so solid may/ barely be gas.

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June: Year-day 181

More tests; yet more tests.  It's TB perhaps.
It's my allergies.  Anyway, I must
now go to the hospital.  We can't trust
it will heal: my system; that a relapse
won't occur; the minor cramps in the calves,
the tender blotches that redden, and swell
round ankles, turn dark; and what I can't tell:
the fluid on my lungs . . . nothing that salves
can cure, returning stronger than before,
spreading from the lower legs, while the aches
and discolorations there deepen, filling
my lungs more.  So, tests: whatever it takes
to reveal the/ low-grade culprit, restore
my body to a state less/ slyly chilling.

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Junes: Year-day 182

So, I'm on umber St. John's third floor,
gathering out a window, and a cop
is completing an accident report;
and a newsboy, shirt off, braking to a stop,
has taken his tan from view; and a sun
I cannot see shines a wind-gabbing maple;
and a car/ whirls round a rock; and a hunt
for a bird without chains/ becomes my staple.

After attempts to collect sputum, neither
of which was very successful; the lettings
of at least 6 vials of blood; X-rays to
re-explore the fluid on my lungs, either
the temp, pulse, & pressure readings are/ getting
to me, or a bird without chains can't coo.
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12 of 25


Brian A. J. Salchert